You will reform, now, Alden.  You will cease from these economies, and you will be discharged.  But in your retirement you will carry with you the admiration and earnest good wishes of the oppressed and toiling scribes.  This will be better than bread.  Let this console you when the bread fails.

You will carry with you another thing, too—­the affection of the scribes; for they all love you in spite of your crimes.  For you bear a kind heart in your breast, and the sweet and winning spirit that charms away all hostilities and animosities, and makes of your enemy your friend and keeps him so.  You have reigned over us thirty-six years, and, please God, you shall reign another thirty-six—­“and peace to Mahmoud on his golden throne!”
                    Always yours
                                   mark

A copyright bill was coming up in Washington and a delegation of authors went down to work for it.  Clemens was not the head of the delegation, but he was the most prominent member of it, as well as the most useful.  He invited the writer to accompany him, and elsewhere I have told in detail the story of that excursion,—­[See Mark Twain; A Biography, chap. ccli,]—­which need be but briefly touched upon here.

His work was mainly done aside from that of the delegation.  They had him scheduled for a speech, however, which he made without notes and with scarcely any preparation.  Meantime he had applied to Speaker Cannon for permission to allow him on the floor of the House, where he could buttonhole the Congressmen.  He was not eligible to the floor without having received the thanks of Congress, hence the following letter: 

To Hon. Joseph Cannon, House of Representatives: 

Dec. 7, 1906.  Dear uncle Joseph,—­Please get me the thanks of the Congress—­not next week but right away.  It is very necessary.  Do accomplish this for your affectionate old friend right away; by persuasion, if you can, by violence if you must, for it is imperatively necessary that I get on the floor for two or three hours and talk to the members, man by man, in behalf of the support, encouragement and protection of one of the nation’s most valuable assets and industries—­its literature.  I have arguments with me, also a barrel, with liquid in it.

Give me a chance.  Get me the thanks of Congress.  Don’t wait for others; there isn’t time.  I have stayed away and let Congress alone for seventy-one years and I am entitled to thanks.  Congress knows it perfectly well and I have long felt hurt that this quite proper and earned expression of gratitude has been merely felt by the House and never publicly uttered.  Send me an order on the Sergeant-at-Arms quick.  When shall I come?  With love and a benediction. 
                              Mark twain.